“When we look at the average time to begin a trip — from the time a driver accepts a trip to when he picks up the rider and starts the trip —<br />that is the highest in the world for Uber here in India,” said Mr. Jain, the president of Uber India.<br />Many drivers arrive after working as private drivers for middle-<br />and upper-class Indians; those jobs can be grueling — drivers work long hours, are expected to be constantly on call, and often aren’t accorded much respect for their work.<br />“Most of these guys used to work as private drivers, and they weren’t treated<br />that well — they were almost invisible to their employers,” said Kalpana Behara, the head of Uber’s driver training center and customer service in Hyderabad.<br />“The way to think about it is that India is a super-important place in the world<br />that has huge cities, with huge transportation needs, that we want to serve,” Mr. Kalanick said in an interview.<br />Over the last few years, to persuade drivers that joining ride companies was worth the cost of a long-term commitment to a new car, Uber<br />and Ola gave drivers bonus payments on top of their standard fare for each ride, as Uber had done in China.
